Girls in the United States are entering puberty at earlier ages than they have in the past, a new study reports.

More than 10 percent of white 7-year-old girls in the study, which was conducted in the mid-2000s, had reached a stage of breast development marking the start of puberty, compared to just 5 percent in a similar study conducted in the early 1990s.

Black and Hispanic girls continue to mature faster than white girls, on average. Nearly one-quarter of black girls and 15 percent of Hispanic girls had entered puberty by age 7, according to the new study, which appears in the journal Pediatrics.

But the trend toward earlier puberty is not as pronounced among blacks as it is among whites, the researchers say. Although the rate of early puberty among black girls in the study (23 percent) was higher than that observed in the early 1990s (15 percent), the increase was not statistically significant.

DEET may be safe to spray on your skin, but not to swallow in drinking water.

To see how safe or unsafe it is, the Minnesota Department of Health has picked the popular insect repellent ingredient as the first of seven "chemicals of emerging concern" to assess during the next year.


"We shower, it goes down the drain, and it ends up in waste water that goes into rivers," said state toxicologist Helen Goeden.

Like many compounds, there are no state or federal standards for DEET, yet it has been detected in water samples nationwide, including Minnesota.

Introduction

On the 30th of July, I browsed through my e-mail messages to make a startling discovery. We had received a message from none other than Jim "MMS" Humble. After a brief moment of eye rubbing, to ensure that I had not been hallucinating, I eagerly read his message and then shared it with Thomas. Humble was upset about the unflattering findings that our research uncovered about his cash cow, which I chronicled in the article, Another Fraud Of Alternative Medicine: M.M.S..

His message thusly began:

In the left corner, we have Jim Humble, inventor of Miracle Mineral Solution.

Thomas and Sarahlcain,

In looking this site over I find quite a lot of useful information. Thus I wondered if you might be interested in opening a dialogue concerning what I am doing since there is a lot of inaccuracies in you information about my stuff, MMS, that is if you know who I am.

I have no animosity towards those of you who talk as you do. Possibly we could have an amiable dialogue.

up to you

Jim Humble

Thomas replied with:

Mr. Humble,

Yes, we did plenty of research into M.M.S., so we are familiar with you. There are two possibilities that I see here: 1. You really believe in what you are doing or 2. you have real guts. It is possibly both.

© HealthWyze.orgIn the right corner, we have weighing in, Sarah Cain of HealthWyze.org

We take our work very seriously. Seeking the truth is one of our highest objectives: just behind 'first do no harm'. We would never print anything that we were not absolutely certain was true. Not only are there moral issues at play; but moreover, our credibility is always on the line.

If you would like a chance to debate us, in order to demonstrate that we have been wrong, then I suggest we do it out in the open. Let's not debate privately in the shadows, because complete openness and honesty are principals that we value, and because this issue has the potential to have a massive impact on the lives of our readers. We normally would not make such an offer to someone who we so strongly feel is harming people, but I get the overwhelming impression that you sincerely believe in what you are doing. Your noble intentions have earned you some karma in my opinion.

If an open and public debate seems agreeable to you, then we will need to agree to some basic rules, like how long our debate should last, and how long the replies may be. I will do no editing on your replies, unless you want me to. Perhaps I could use a picture of us and a picture of you at the top, if that's okay. Readers really like that sort of personal touch, and it draws them into the story.

- Thomas Corriher

1 million pounds of ground beef recalled in Ore., Ariz., Texas, Calif. after 7 sickened by E. coli.

Modesto, California - A meat processor recalled about 1 million pounds of ground beef products Friday after seven people were sickened by E. coli contamination.

Valley Meat Co., of Modesto, sold the potentially contaminated beef patties and ground beef in California, Texas, Oregon, Arizona and internationally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.

The beef was processed from Oct. 2, 2009, to Jan. 12, 2010. Most of the products were sold frozen and the company was working to remove them from grocery store shelves.

Keeping one's brain active, trying not to become depressed and eating a diet rich in fruit and vegetables are the best ways to ward off developing dementia, a study of almost 1,500 volunteers has found.

If younger people were to follow such advice, millions worldwide could avoid or postpone the debilitating condition in old age, the research suggests.

The combined effects would far outstrip the theoretical possibility of eliminating a gene known to increase the chance of dementia, according to the study, published today in the British Medical Journal.

Study Shows Three-Quarters of Parents of Autistic Children Stay Married

Parents of children with autism may be more likely to divorce when their children reach adolescence or young adulthood than parents of children without this or other developmental disabilities, finds a new study in the August issue of the Journal of Family Psychology.

Despite this increase in divorce seen as children with autism grew up, fully three-quarters of these parents did remain married, the new study showed.

"You are not fated to get divorced because you have a child with autism, but there is a prolonged vulnerability to divorce for these families," study researcher Sigan L. Hartley, PhD, a professor of human development and family studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison, tells WebMD.

In the harbour of Port Vila, a husband awaits scientific explanation of his wife's agonising end.

Doug Nash and Silvia Fink met and fell in love on a yacht. After their 2007 marriage, the Windcastle took them to the still-warm lava of the Galapagos Islands, to Tonga, where they met the Pacific's last king, and on to New Zealand, surviving a ''pasting'' on the famously rough crossing.

''She was just crew but she ended up staying five years,'' Nash says. ''We had a tremendously successful romance and developed a great partnership. Our goal was a complete circumnavigation, but that came to a screeching halt in August.''

Their boat now floats on a mooring in Port Vila harbour, Vanuatu, riding out the cyclone season. By the time it sets sail again, at least nine months will have passed since it was the scene of 56-year-old Silvia's sudden and mysterious death. In the meantime, her widower waits, and waits.

Genetically modified crops are commonplace in fields across the United States, but a new study suggests that some plants have spread into the wild. A survey of North Dakota has turned up hundreds of genetically modified canola plants growing along roads across the state.

The results, presented Friday at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Pittsburgh, show that the vast majority of feral canola plants in the state contain artificial genes that make them resistant to herbicides. Researchers also found two plants that contained traits from multiple genetically modified varieties, suggesting that genetically modified plants are breeding in the wild.

"What we've demonstrated in this study is a large-scale escape of a genetically modified crop in the United States," says Cindy Sagers, an ecologist at the University of Arkansas, who led the study.

Few scientists believe that the canola plants pose an environmental risk, but the study highlights the ease with which some genetically modified plants can spread beyond their fields.

While the devastating ecological impacts of BP's oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are obvious, the less visible but also long-lasting psychological, community and personal impacts could be worse, according to social scientists, psychologists and psychiatrists.

"People are becoming more and more hopeless and feeling helpless," Dr. Arwen Podesta, a psychiatrist at Tulane University in New Orleans told Truthout. "They are feeling frantic and overwhelmed. This is worse than [Hurricane] Katrina. There is already more post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and more problems with domestic violence, threats of suicide and alcohol and drugs."

Dr. Podesta, who also works in addiction clinics and hospitals said, "It's a remarkably similar experience to that of the stressors of Katrina. There is an acute event, but then a long-term increase in hopelessness with every promise that is broken. Like a promise for money to rebuild a life, then people are put through red tape and each time they fail to move forward, they take five steps back in their psychological welfare."

"The total number of years this will affect us is unknown," Dr. Podesta said, adding, "however, it could affect us for possibly 20 to 30 years."